Hydrogen passivation is employed for changing the properties of silicon films such as amorphous silicon films and polycrystalline silicon films. Such films may be suitable for electronic and optoelectronic applications. Techniques employed for producing hydrogenated silicon films have included glow-discharge decomposition of silane, reactive sputtering in a hydrogen atmosphere, vacuum evaporation, ion plating, ion-beam sputtering, and mixing evaporated silicon from an electron-beam source with a stream of ionized hydrogen. The addition of hydrogen during the evaporation of germanium has also been shown to improve the electrical properties of the resulting film.